How do you deal with failure in game?

How do you deal with failure in game?

I don't like losing, and my group doesn't like losing, but it some times happens.

I sigh, go "oh well" and move on.

It sucks, but it happens. There's no ups without downs, no good without bad. It makes triumph all the sweeter if you struggle through adversity to achieve it.

Player characters rarely ever succeed. They just sorta fail forward most of the time

If you're an OOC sore loser, then you're not gonna have a lot of fun and people won't find you fun.

You need to roll with the punches. Improvising out of a failure is often more fun than everything going smoothly anyway.

Grow up and deal OP

I have to admit, it can be frustrating when I try to create a cool, competent character who is an expert in their field and the dice decide that they are instead clumsy fools. Still, it would all feel hollow if failure were impossible.

It depends on system, and GM.

If you're playing something with criticals and fumbles then you have this 1 in whatever chance of being a fool. If the system has no way to modify the roll or reroll you have to take it.

I think a good GM technique to deal with bad rolls is to not describe the PC screwing up, but the challenge being greater than expected. Maintains the cool competence without removing the possibility of failure.

Unless it's like a tournament how can you lose at RPGs? Many start off their intro section with "there are no winners or losers in RPGs" for a reason, often preceded by "rule one, have fun". Play one of those.

Maybe he's the kind of player who gets really upset when his plans fall apart

Find a lesson in your failure. You haven't truly lost if you learned something.

That sounds interesting, but i would combine both.
Sometimes your tool breakes, or you lose your footing, or trip.
But interpreting a bad roll, not as a failure of skill, but as a failure to assess the difficulty of the task was something i never though about.

>how can you lose at RPGs?
Your character can die.

>lvl 1 character
>Bio has you killing dragons, making/piloting gundams to kill the emperor of space, [enter other ridiculous shit here]

If your character was an "expert" in their field then the dice could barely ever fuck you over if it's not contested against another expert character. Depending on the system some classes/roles make it literally impossible to do anything worse than an 'okay' job if you attempt to do literally anything associated with your skills instead of fail them, and even if you did 'fail' them an expert would still have gotten a roll that would almost constitute a critical success in the lower levels of gameplay.

>>lvl 1 character
>Bio has you killing dragons, making/piloting gundams to kill the emperor of space, [enter other ridiculous shit here]

I hate this shit so much, all my players wanted to start at the system's equivalent of level one, but then they brought characters with bios where their character was a total badass and killed tons of people and was a great general or whatever.

I mean, if you want to play that sort of character, fine, but don't insist that you want to start off at level 1.

I've never really understand how anyone can get worked up over a game in the first place. That's pretty much the only red flag I'll always act on. It's kind of a mixed bag, since it's nice to know people care about a game, but there's a certain level of manchildness to it that I just can't bring myself to tolerate

I rarely see someone get worked up over the game itself, but I've seen a lot of people get worked up over their characters as if they were their children, to the point of refusing to play if the GM asked them to change something about it or (in one instance) getting extremely angry and throwing a tantrum when we joked about their character dying.

Then put them against a dragon or whatever tough challenge. It should be fair, their character already knows how to handle it.

Oh, yeah, don't worry, I'm pretty modest in terms of backstories for characters starting at low levels/low point totals/starting characters/whatever. And I'll accept that maybe I'm just oversensitive and am expecting too much out of my characters as I built them.

Failure should help segue into a new set of complications to make the story interesting.

Failure is shit if it means "nothing happens."

>Great, fucking captured
>Now these nerds are playing some kind of game
>Ugh, who cares
>It's cold
>Why did i need to be in my bra for this?

Sometimes the failure leads to the end of the story/campaign. For example, a TPK or the PCs deciding to split up for good.

Other times, the story continues, just in a different way than if they succeeded. Maybe they just have to proceed on a different plan for a while (eg having to fight their way out after failing to sneak around), maybe the potential story diverges.

Never happened, people who've GM'd for me are gigantic pussies.

Exactly this. Every time dice are rolled, something interesting happens, regardless of outcome. This (in addition to laziness) is why I keep my notes simple and let the dice fill in the details. As it turns out, the dice are way better at making an interesting story than I am.

For example, the rogue didn't fail his lockpicking attempt because he suddenly forgot how his tools work, instead, the lock is way more complicated than it appears and now the group has to find a different way through the door: They could try breaking it down and risk alerting whatever is lurking in the dungeon, they could try finding the key (which is a simple matter of throwing it in with some treasure or upgrading an encounter to include an elite enemy who carries the key on him), or they could simply find another way through the dungeon. (If the door was nothing more than a static pass/fail lockpicking check then it probably wasn't an essential door anyhow.)

Another example might be an otherwise competent fighter fumbling his attack roll against a goblin. Sure, it could be that the fighter derped and dropped his sword, or it could be that the goblin is actually way more competent than he appears. That way, when the PCs do beat him, it won't be them beating just another goblin that the fighter fucked up his swing against, instead, it is the triumph against this surprisingly badass foe. (Of course, he was just a normal goblin the whole time, but a few embellishments can go a long way.)

Basically, so long as you are willing to work with the dice rather than in spite of them, it's not hard to keep your players invested even when they fail.

As a GM I endeavor to make losing/failure interesting. I watch a LOT of professional wrestling, and the cathartic release of seeing the face beat the heel feels a lot better when the heel has been on a winning streak, than when the face just can't lose. I try to let that spirit inform my game's approach to failure.

Would be interesting to take another set of characters into the same setting. Fail against Lord Wormwood who wanted to legalize both slavery and necromancy in a country? What happens in say 5 to 100 years later?

Why the dude on the right wearing the table cloth?

Shit happens.
I like when it happens in a hillarious way.
I like SS13 and DCSS.

Soice of these pics?

By becoming the cover of a metal album.

Wish I had my picture..
>assuming

>>It's cold
>>Why did i need to be in my bra for this?
You never complain about being underdressed when you're watching Chads play sports.

You can choose to focus on legalizing gay marriage while a lich completes his ritual to bring ten thousand years of darkness.